Helping students stay on track for graduation

Every semester, undergraduate students have a stressful experience registering for courses. Students are forced to delay their graduation because the course they need isn’t offered or provides enough course options that suit their schedule. College Students who experience financial pressure, lack of support, mental and emotional issues, health problems, or family obligations struggle more to find affordable courses that meet their needs to continue their education. ClassFindr is dedicated to providing an alternate path to help students find alternative courses outside of their home institution.

My UX Design Process

I empathized with students who couldn't get the courses because I used to be in their shoes. I wanted to design the best app to help alleviate this problem so I wanted to conduct research

Understanding the students perspective and experience

Advisors play an essential role in the student’s preparation for class enrollment. Even with their support students don’t get the classes they need so it is still a stressful process. Simultaneously students encountered, financial pressure, lack of support from advisors, take 5th year, and difficulty finding the right courses that fit their schedule.

Through various surveys we received 41 responses and 18 qualified to move to the user interview.

Students have to be resilient, positive and hopeful
Quotes pulled from user interviews

Created a user persona to keep the user in mind

I was able to narrow it down to the goal and problem

Figuring out the user flow

High-level user flow

Enhance the brand to match its new look and feel

I re-designed the ClassFindr logo to match the uplifting and youthful feeling tone on the ClassFindr web app. The new logo enhances the brand and creates a calming and youthful feeling for students when they enter the app.

Old Logo on the left & new logo on the right

Designed a mood board to inspire the design phase

It was important to nail down a design guide before moving into sketching and designing

Sketch Ideas for ClassFindr

Conducted usability testing to get feedback and help us determine the right direction for ClassFindr

Feedback from users

Design Decisions for Final Design

This feedback evolved the Classfindr web app to be more personalized and effective  for users to perform 3 essentials tasks:

  1. Search for courses outside of their home institution
  2. Submit an enrollment request form for the desired courses
  3. Connect with an advisor from the institution

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Get a closer look into interfaces I designed

What I learned

As the project lead, I found it essential to stay in communication with my teammates and periodically check that everyone is on the same page with the direction and pace of the project. This is the key to ensuring that we meet the users and business needs.

My key takeaways:

1. When it is difficult to identify what deliverables should be co-created or independent check-in with your teammate's capacity and the project timeline

2. When it’s difficult to make a design decision it’s important to refer back to the users and user feedback to let them dictate the direction of the design

3. It’s important to take a moment to check in with your teammates through the design process